


A Corgi By Any Other Name

by FeathersandFreckles



Series: Corgi 'Verse [1]
Category: X-Men: First Class (2011) - Fandom
Genre: Alternate Universe - Human, Corgis, Fluff, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-03-03
Updated: 2014-03-03
Packaged: 2018-01-14 11:50:04
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,325
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1265443
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/FeathersandFreckles/pseuds/FeathersandFreckles
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Erik never expected dogs to get in the way of his relationship with Charles.</p>
            </blockquote>





	A Corgi By Any Other Name

**Author's Note:**

> A discussion of corgis in Cherik fic inspired this. I'm sorry.

When Erik and Charles had first gotten together, the dogs had seemed inconsequential. Meaningless in the scheme of things. 

It had only been a matter of weeks before Erik realized just how far off his assumption had been. As time spanned, they seemed to grow worse.

Even before they had moved in together, Charles’ corgis had managed to wreak havoc upon their relationship. At least they did in Erik’s opinion. The other man seemed completely oblivious to the way things slowly began to change.

From the very start, Erik had just assumed that the heavy, fur-covered sausages were given firm boundaries. Constantly kept at a distance by the closed bedroom door whenever he and Charles were inside, and denied free range of the couch and kitchen.

The charade was maintained for roughly the first month and a half of their relationship. Every time Erik spent any amount of time at Charles’ place, the two little mutts were shooed to the oversized dog bed in the corner of the living room. He was convinced that was how it always was in Charles’ apartment.

The initial sign of change came the first night Charles left the bedroom door open after coming back from the bathroom. Both of the land seals came charging in with their whole bodies waggling like demented eels. Erik lay awake, staring at the ceiling with Charles draped across him, listening.

He could hear them pacing around the floor in the dark, the clack of their tiny, painful little nails echoing across the hardwood. The noise was occasionally interspersed by the desperate clatter of their attempts to scale the side of the bed. Between the elevation provided by the box spring and the pathetic excuses the mongrels called legs, he remained unscathed.

Things continued to devolve steadily. The very next time Erik was over, he walked into the apartment to find the stubby-legged groundhogs splayed possessively across the couch. Charles had kissed him in greeting, oblivious to the death glares he was sharing with the obese rodents. 

They seemed to laugh at him, attempting to wag their nonexistent tails as their oversized tongues and ears lolled and flickered. Before they could have an altercation, he relocated himself to the kitchen, where Charles was stirring a basic pasta sauce. At least there, he was safe.

He should have known that the state of things could only get any worse the first time Charles spent the night at his place and asked if he could bring his dogs.

Erik was highly tempted to say no. He didn’t care that they would starve without anyone home to feed them or ruin every carpet in Charles’ apartment. Good riddance to them both and that ugly faux antique rug in the dining room. But he knew that if they weren’t speaking over the phone, he would have been hit with the full force of Charles’ pleading, uncertain, dissatisfied eyes and pursed lips. He had a talent for compiling every possible emotion he could feel into a single gaze.

“I can’t spend the night if I have to leave them home alone.” Charles stated when Erik wasn’t quick to respond. He said something about his neighbor being unable to dog sit, but Erik’s mind was busily chanting _whywhywhywhy._

“Fine. But they stay in the kitchen.” It was the only place he could think of that would not be utterly destroyed by dog fur and potential mess.

He was so wrong.

They woke up to find slobber marks all over the tile where they’d carelessly vacuumed up spilt kibble and a thin film of fur and dandruff _everywhere_. It filled Erik with dread when he realized it was too late to start lying about having allergies.

The feeling was worsened when he kissed Charles goodbye after a late-morning brunch and the phrase ‘I love you’ was released into the air.

He didn’t say it back, and Charles didn’t seem to mind. Vicious grins were sent his way from each of the organic fur-satellites as they trotted out on their owner’s heels.

Erik thought he was handling his eternal damnation in a mature fashion. Weeks turned to months and sharing the bed went from being an activity involving only two warm bodies to four. He was absolutely horrified to learn that they had an actual staircase, previously shoved into the back of the closet. 

When Charles caught him gaping at it the first time, he said, “Jumping is harmful to their backs.” As if it were perfectly normal to buy tiny staircases so that your overgrown caterpillars could have open season on your bed.

There was no way he could have been expected to get used to being woken by yelping when he accidentally kicked either of them in his sleep. Or the utterly disgusting sensation and smell of tongues and dirty paws all over his face before the alarm had even gone off. 

When months became nearly a year, he couldn’t very well tell his long term boyfriend that they couldn’t move in together because of dogs. Dogs that Charles had declared were the closest things he would ever have to children on numerous occasions. _Fur children_ , a voice in his head unhelpfully supplied.

His rent was only weeks from up, and Charles had this hopeful gleam in his eyes every time he mentioned looking for a new, bigger place. Somewhere with an elevator and room for a study.

Erik sincerely considered suggesting they adopt or find a surrogate, but he agreed without a word anyway. While kids didn’t shed, they were a responsibility that lasted eighteen years, not ten to fourteen.

Despite his desperate, cunning attempts to make the pet stairs disappear in the process of packing Charles’ old place up, it still managed to end up at the foot of their new bed.

Even with carpets throughout the new apartment, he wasn’t able to convince Charles that the dogs should be corralled to the living room. All he got was Charles rolling his big, blue eyes. An act that simultaneously enraged Erik and made him want to smirk.

“They’re house trained, Erik. And I promise they won’t destroy the couch.”

That was another one of his unspoken fears. The couch was Erik’s, and it had followed him through his last three living spaces. It had remained faithfully untarnished and comfortable despite years of use, and he was undeniably attached to the leather monstrosity. The idea of the quadruped pill bugs all over his beloved sofa with the serrated little claws had his blood pressure rising.

He tried, with all his might, to enforce a no-dogs-on-couch rule, but every time he walked in, there they were. Smirking at him with their stupid little bat faces. Why did they even have ears that big any way?

It turned out that the worst of everything was not being forced to cohabitate with the hellhounds, but caring for them.

On days where he got home first, or when Charles didn’t deem it a good day to spirit them off to work with him, he was forced to interact with them. Feed them their disgustingly pricey organic dog food, freshen their water, meticulously groom them, snap their leashes and take them out on a walk.

It drove him insane that the matching leather collars the two rodents wore were probably nicer than any watch or pair of shoes Charles owned. Just holding the rich, brown leashes made his hands twitch.

He actually had to talk himself up to picking up after them the first time. As he stared at the patch of grass, they watched him with maliciously expectant expressions on their faces. Erik was genuinely convinced that they pooped just to spite him.

Almost every walk received him coos from women, children, and occasionally the dog-loving man. With a bitter look, he gruffly informed each person that asked after them that they were not his, and no, he did not know how old they were. He even went so far as to pretend he didn’t even know their names. Despite the insurmountable number of times that Charles informed him that they only responded to commands when called by their actual designations. “Her name isn’t ‘You’, Erik.”

Over a year into their relationship, Erik had finally come to terms with the fact that he was stuck with the extraterrestrial canines until they either died, ran away, or he and Charles broke up. At any given time, he didn’t know which would come first.

When it came alarmingly close to death, Erik was home alone with both dogs. He’d been locked in their shared study, staring bleakly at the screen of his laptop very pointedly not enjoying his day off. His peace lasted almost no time when he heard whimpering from outside the door. 

For several minutes, he attempted to ignore it. Charles had walked the dogs in his pre-work ritual not even an hour ago. He’d even heard them being fed, so they had no excuse to bother him.

When the whimpering didn’t cease, and was soon accompanied by audible pacing, Erik threw himself out of his desk chair and stomped to the door.

As he hauled it open, he glared down to find the older roving bathmat staring up at him. It had vomit in its fur.

Caught between disgust and outrage, Erik just stared for the longest time, breathing deeply through his nose. “No,” he declared, as if that would change the fact that there was dog puke somewhere. There was an eighty percent chance that it was on a carpet. There went their deposit.

After searching the apartment fruitlessly with both mutts on his heels, he discovered that he had very naïvely not accounted for the one percent chance of the vomit being _on_ his bed.

As he stripped the bedspread off and shooed both infuriating dogs out of the room with curses muttered in German, he whipped out his phone to call Charles.

“Vomit! On our bed!” He snarled into the phone before his boyfriend could even greet him.

Charles’ ‘what’ was lost in the rustle of the sheets as Erik bundled them up into a huge mound and carried them out into the living room.

“One of these mongrels puked on our bed.” He reiterated as he carefully dropped the blanket before the front door and shoved his feet into the nearest pair of shoes. As Charles processed his words, he sharply demanded that the dogs come.

On the other end of the line, he could hear Charles’ concerned humming. The sound persisted even as Erik pinched his cell between his ear and shoulder so he could stoop. The older dog was still whimpering, even as he clipped their leashes on. 

They couldn’t be trusted alone, and Erik was in no mood to come back to find more vomit or something equally disgusting smeared across his carpets.

“Which one is sick?” Charles asked over the sound of the apartment door slamming behind Erik, the comforter, and the dogs.

“I don’t know. Professor, I think.” They continued talking as Erik rode the elevator down, looking like a crazed, unkempt mess. He wasn’t even wearing socks. A woman from three floors down kept her distance as she boarded the elevator after him to make her own ride down.

“Like I know how to tell if he’s OK, Charles.” Erik snapped as the doors dinged open to release him into the basement. He nearly tripped over the dogs and snapped his neck as he tried to exit it. “He stood outside the study and started whining and hasn’t stopped.”

“Did you leave out anything he could eat?" 

Erik rolled his eyes as he hunted down a vacant washer and immediately shoved the blankets in. Only then did he realize he’d forgotten his detergent and change.

As he began to look around for any answer to his problems, he was distracted by the sound of retching. His running shoes were promptly ruined for good.

“No!” He cried, still on the line with Charles, as he shifted his weight from foot to foot, uncertain of what to do with himself. The lone stranger in the room with him turned to stare, startled.

In a panicked tone, Charles demanded, “What?”

“It puked on me.” Anger reverberated in his tone, tinged with revulsion and frustration. “On me, Charles.”

“Erik, I think he may be sick. You’re going to have to take him to the vet. I’d do it, but I have a class in several minutes.”

“Charles!”

“I’ll text you her number. I’m sorry to inconvenience you.”

Erik never hated either of the ankle-biters more than he did when he had stuff his blankets into a washer and leave it unrun. He was already trudging towards the vet’s office in his vomit-filled sneakers as he made the call.

As the assistant on the other end of the line tried to inform him that there were no openings, he persisted. He wouldn’t let anyone tell him that he had to find another vet’s office, not when there was pungent warmth seeping between his bare toes. Not like he knew what kind of vet to even look for.

That was how he wound up sitting in the middle of the vet’s waiting room with both corgis perched precariously on his lap, glaring down a monstrous yellow creature making hungry eyes at them. Charles would never forgive him if he took one dog to the vet and came back with neither of them.

When the ill bat-dog paused its whining to being heaving once more, he angled the dog in the direction of the other canine and lifted his feet clear of the splash zone.

The vet assistant gave him a look as she stepped out from behind the front desk to once again clean up the mess that Charles’ dog was making. He returned it with as much fervor, no more deserving of the situation than she was. All she had to do was inform him when the vet had an opening, and he would be out of her hair.

That time didn’t come soon enough, because shortly after the owner of the yellow mutt relocated, the corgi’s whimpering increased ten fold and he began performing an odd sort of fidgeting dance on Erik’s knees. He grimaced at the thought of what such movements could be churning up in its tiny little stomach.

“Professor Xavier.” A young woman called from a doorway that Erik hadn’t noticed opening. She was a welcome sight dressed in her scrubs and with a stethoscope around her neck.

Immediately, Erik grabbed first one corgi and then the other under his arms so that he could haul them towards the door as fast as humanly possible. The very second they realized their destination, they both began to whine and tremble. But he had neither the free hands nor the inclination to soothe them like Charles probably would.

“Right this way.” The vet tech said as she spun to head down the walkway.

Their nails cut into his sides through the thin fabric of his t-shirt as they scrabbled and thrashed. He just narrowly avoided dropping them through pure power of will alone, and deposited them both upon the floor unceremoniously when they arrived in the examination room.

“So which one of these cuties is Professor?” The vet tech asked as she flipped open the file in her hands and set it on the examination table to stoop down.

Erik looked on with a grimace held firmly on his face. He pointed down at the older dog, grunting, “The black one.” While not a good description, she cottoned on immediately.

The woman nodded and cooed at the dog, carefully winding her arms around his pudgy frame to scoop him up.

Upon prompting, he explained the issue and watched with his arms crossed as she went through an animal-centric version of a very human-looking checkup. Erik frowned harder as she actually complimented the dog on his exemplary weight.

She was only there for a few brief minutes before she was gone, leaving Erik to hold the mutt’s collar so he didn’t face plant off the table. For his troubles, he received the loudest cries from both the dogs that he’d ever heard. Somehow the other dog managed to drag her leash free of his grip and stuff her entire frame beneath the chair in the corner.

It felt like ages before someone rejoined him in the room. A middle-aged woman wearing a lab coat strode in; already carrying the file the vet tech had been working on.

“Oh!” She exclaimed as her eyes landed on him. She looked Erik up and down, clearly surprised. “I was expecting Mr. Xavier." 

“If only.” Erik groused as he waited rather impatiently for her to step forward and take over holding the dog. Almost as if it were on cue, the dog began retching again. 

Four hours of his time, and gouges all down his forearms later, he was handed a diagnosis of ingested toxins and a pat on the back for reacting so swiftly. Somehow, somewhere, the stupid animal had managed to eat something he definitely shouldn’t have had. Something about a lawn sprayed with pesticides, he wasn’t sure.

Erik left the vet’s office, nearing two in the afternoon, with only one dog and promise that Mr. Xavier would be called when Professor Xavier was ready to be released after an overnight stay.

The second he returned to the apartment, he unleashed the remaining monster, deposited his sneakers in the trash chute, and called Charles. He still had to see to his bedding after a quick scrub in the shower.

That night was an absolute nightmare, as Charles came home looking like he was missing his baby, and demanded that the other dog spend every second by his side.

He fell asleep, firmly on his side of the bed, with Charles’ curled protectively around his corgi across from him.

Out of respect and fear of hurting Charles, he did not complain. He maintained his silence when Professor came home and attached himself to their hips whenever they were around. As if being stepped on numerous times didn’t teach him anything.

Work was a blessing, even when he spent most of his time behind his drafting table knowing full well that Charles would undoubtedly spend another night cuddling with his dogs rather than Erik.

In an attempt to remedy his recent neglect, he sucked up all his ill-contained resentment and reluctance, and slowly began to break down the wall he’d built between himself and the fat little French rolls. 

He forced his affection upon Charles, insinuating himself into the gaps left behind by the dogs. It meant letting them climb all over him so that he could watch a movie with an arm draped around Charles’ shoulders. And sleeping trapped in a single position as one or both of the dogs took to sprawling across his legs and feet.

Somewhere down the line, he stopped calling them ‘its’ and began using their names. ‘Professor’ and ‘Isabella’ – pronounced in that odd British way Charles used - became ‘Peanut’ and ‘Issit’. The stupidest nicknames ever, in Erik’s opinion. He’d voiced it several times to no avail and still somehow got sucked into their use.

A year turned into two years, and Erik suddenly found himself aware of their ages and birthdays and their favorite places to be rubbed. Even how they liked to sleep. Professor with his stumpy little legs straight in the air, and Isabella with her face buried anywhere uncomfortable she could possibly stick it.

It didn’t stop him from hating the insane amount of fur they shed all throughout the apartment. Or the way they barked every single time a deliveryman knocked on the door. And especially the way they hogged the bed.

But he was nothing if not a dedicated boyfriend, willing to make sacrifices for his significant other.


End file.
